In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 Rehearsal in Missouri for the Liberal Republican Movement, 1865–1870 O n December 15, 1870, Carl Schurz of Missouri rose before the U.S. Senate to ‘‘submit some observations upon the political movements in Missouri, which seem to have attracted unusual attention and have acquired more than local interest.’’ The country was focused on Missouri because Schurz had led a group of self-named ‘‘Liberal Republicans’’ against the Republican Party in the state during the fall elections to advocate amnesty for former Confederates, civil service reform, and free trade—all positions that were unpopular with the national Republican Party. The bolt was particularly interesting because it was successful; Liberal Republican candidate B. Gratz Brown was elected governor, and parts of the state constitution disenfranchising ex-rebels were amended. President Ulysses S. Grant correctly feared that the Missouri bolt signified a challenge to his Republican administration. Just days after Brown’s election, the American Free Trade League wrote Schurz to congratulate him on the success in Missouri. ‘‘There may be ulterior consequences resulting from it of even greater importance than its immediate advantages,’’ noted the League; the group was ‘‘of the opinion that the time is near at hand when a new political movement in favor of Revenue and Civil Service Reform may be started with success. It is there for proposed to hold a conference of the leaders of these reforms.’’ Two weeks later, the proposed conference met in New York and created a new national political organization, the liberal republican movement.1 The Liberal Republican bolt in Missouri did more than start the national liberal republican movement, for the events leading up to the bolt foreshadowed many of the same plots and themes the movement would act out on the national stage during the next two years. Just like Schurz’s Liberals in Missouri, the national liberal republican movement advocated amnesty, civil service reform, and free trade. Both used classical republican arguments—that dependent citizens, corruption, and centralized power endangers liberty—to contend that the policies of the current party in power, the Republicans, threatened the country’s future. Both relied on the support of German Americans and planned to use Democratic votes to gain control of the Republican Party. The events in Missouri leading up to the 1870 bolt not only demonstrate how the liberal republican movement began, but how the movement would develop, for the 2 The Doom of Reconstruction success of the Missouri bolt led Schurz and others to try consciously to reproduce it on a national scale. Missouri politics from 1865 to 1870 were a dress rehearsal for the national liberal republican movement, providing insights into the movement’s composition and ideology.2 Politics in Missouri had been byzantine since the beginning of the Civil War, when Governor Claiborne Jackson tried to lead the state out of the Union and into the Confederacy. The threat of secession disrupted the state’s existing Democratic-Republican party structure, as citizens realigned into Secessionist and Unionist factions. Francis P. Blair Jr., a member of the powerful Blair family that dominated Maryland and Missouri politics throughout the midnineteenth century, led the Unionists against the pro-Confederate state government . Blair arranged for a staunch Unionist to command the federal arsenal at St. Louis, converted Republican ‘‘Wide Awake’’ election clubs into paramilitary organizations, and invited Illinois volunteer regiments into Missouri. With these military forces he effectively led a coup d’etat by attacking the proConfederacy state militia camped outside of St. Louis, allowing the Unionists to gain control of the state and prevent its secession. Since many Missouri Secessionists refused to take the loyalty oath that was made a requirement to vote in the state, the Unionists faced minimal political opposition. The absence of the Secessionist Democrats from the state political scene—first by martial law, and then by legal disenfranchisement—left the Unionist Republicans in undisputed control and essentially destroyed the two-party system in Missouri. This temporary collapse of the two-party system in Missouri demonstrates the fluid and changing nature of the national political party ‘‘system’’ of the day and the peculiar environment in which liberal republicanism originated.3 Despite almost completely excluding the Democrats from power for a while, the Missouri Republicans were a politically heterogeneous group that quickly divided into factions. Those known as Conservative Unionists wished to maintain the status quo with regard to slavery in the state, while the Radical Unionists , under the leadership of Charles D. Drake, pressed for speedy emancipation...

Share